"Teunis Jansen Laenen van Peelt" is the full manner in which the supposed elder of the two brothers signed his name to documents. The fact that Teunis spelled out "van Peelt," as he did, is one of the proofs that his ancestors, if not he himself, came from "the Peel," a tract of country in the nature of a morass, located both in the southern part of Holland and the northern part of Belgium. It occupies about sixty square miles of land between two large rivers, the Meuse and the Aa. In Belgium "the Peel" is in the province of Limburg. Directly contiguous to that province is the province (we should say county) of Liege, whose capital is the large and prosperous city of Liege, now of nearly 150,000 inhabitants. Wherever born, Teunis and his brother came from the province of Liege.
The name of the wife of Teunis, who came with him, is not certainly known. But his children were aged respectively 18, 16, 14, 9, 7 and 2 years, and were perhaps the six first named of the following nine children, which he had by both his first and second wife: Jan; Anthony; Elizabeth; Magdalena; Aert; Wouter; Hendrick; Teuntje and Rebecca. Teunis married as his second wife Gertrude Jans, widow of John Otter, and located at first in Brooklyn. He was by occupation a fisherman. Between 1675 and 1684 he made four or more purchases of land at New Utrecht, L. I., and appeared to prosper. The date of his death is unknown. Some particulars of his descendants will be found in Bergen's "Early Settlers of Kings County" (pp. 353 - 359). As a matter of fact nearly all of his descendants became Van Pelts; they dropped the "Laenen" entirely. Hence it is that the Van Pelt and Lane families of New Jersey are really of one stock, under different names.